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New submitter Craefter writes "Adobe has finally seen the same light Steve Jobs did in 2010 and is now committed to putting mobile Flash player in the history books as soon as possible. Adobe will not develop and test Flash player for Android 4.1 and will now focus on a PC browsing and apps. In a blog post, they wrote, 'Devices that don’t have the Flash Player provided by the manufacturer typically are uncertified, meaning the manufacturer has not completed the certification testing requirements. In many cases users of uncertified devices have been able to download the Flash Player from the Google Play Store, and in most cases it worked. However, with Android 4.1 this is no longer going to be the case, as we have not continued developing and testing Flash Player for this new version of Android and its available browser options. There will be no certified implementations of Flash Player for Android 4.1. Beginning August 15th we will use the configuration settings in the Google Play Store to limit continued access to Flash Player updates to only those devices that have Flash Player already installed. Devices that do not have Flash Player already installed are increasingly likely to be incompatible with Flash Player and will no longer be able to install it from the Google Play Store after August 15th.'"

He did not say those things because he meant them, they were said because if iOS ran flash then applications could have been used on it that were not vetted by Apple.

You say that as if that's a bad thing. Maybe it is for third parties, but from Apple's point of view and from the point of view of their users, prohibiting third parties from controlling the development ecosystem of a platform is the only thing that makes sense. Read what Jobs called the "most important reason" for disallowing Flash on iOS:

Sixth, the most important reason. [For not allowing Flash on iOS.]

Besides the fact that Flash is closed and proprietary, has major technical drawbacks, and doesn’t support touch based devices, there is an even more important reason we do not allow Flash on iPhones, iPods and iPads. We have discussed the downsides of using Flash to play video and interactive content from websites, but Adobe also wants developers to adopt Flash to create apps that run on our mobile devices.

We know from painful experience that letting a third party layer of software come between the platform and the developer ultimately results in sub-standard apps and hinders the enhancement and progress of the platform. If developers grow dependent on third party development libraries and tools, they can only take advantage of platform enhancements if and when the third party chooses to adopt the new features. We cannot be at the mercy of a third party deciding if and when they will make our enhancements available to our developers.

This becomes even worse if the third party is supplying a cross platform development tool. The third party may not adopt enhancements from one platform unless they are available on all of their supported platforms. Hence developers only have access to the lowest common denominator set of features. Again, we cannot accept an outcome where developers are blocked from using our innovations and enhancements because they are not available on our competitor’s platforms.

Also, to address your "fear is this will mean online video sites will start making their own apps that do not work on my linux desktops" I first want to ask why should iOS users and Apple care about Adobe's proprietary solution for your linux desktop. The only proper answer, of course, is *crickets*. The improper answer is that linux and everyone else in the world would be better off if video were (back-)implemented as an open standard which is where HTML5 comes in.

HTML5 will fix this problem of one company single-handedly controlling the future of web-delivered video. The problem was the fault of the big players who tried to corner the video codec market (Silverlight, Quicktime) with their own stupid plugins and losing to a respectable competitor, in this case Adobe.

Now that the battle has been lost Apple (and everyone else) understand that controlling the widget isn't as important as interoperability and you, as a linux user, should understand that fairly well.

Flash is going to die and everyone except for maybe a few Flash software engineers (and that temporarily) are going to be better off as a result.

The feature was being allowed to have it if I wanted, not flash itself. I don't have it installed on my phone, but I do on my tablet. Amazon video for instance uses it. My fear is this will mean online video sites will start making their own apps that do not work on my linux desktops.

Jobs wasn't right, but his statement was self-fulfilling. Adobe abandoned the mobile Flash Player BECAUSE Apple would never allow it on iOS, and iOS owned too much of the market for Flash to have a chance on mobile without it.

It had nothing to do with Flash being unable to work well on mobile. The benchmarks show conclusively that Flash performs better on Android than HTML5+JS. Further proof of this is that Flash continues to work well and be supported for app development on both iOS and Android. And by "wo

YES Jobs statement was inaccurate. But his war on Flash was successful.

I just wished that instead of wasting time trying to kill Flash he had simply fixed the piece of frakking divinely condemned fecal matter that is iTunes. (Sorry for the profanity, but I have NEVER EVER in my life dealt with a worse piece of software.

I just wished that instead of wasting time trying to kill FlashIn what way did Apple "waste time"? Instead, they saved a HUGE amount of time by not having to try and optimize Flash to the point it would work well on a limited chipset, but not having to worry about browser integration.

Apple didn't try to kill flash so much as they said "we see no place for it on mobile" and then proceed to spend resources on other things. So instead of wasting time, you have to ask just what else would have been not quite

Yep, you replaced a program that the owner didn't mind if you made a FOSS version with one controlled by patent trolls and which is in bed with MSFT and Apple, two companies with a LONG history of locking down and not playing nice...congrats.

Mark my words FOSS lovers, you are gonna look back one day soon and go "WTF was we thinking?" because MPEG-LA will end up royally fucking you over. H.265 is coming and guess what? To replace platforms like Flash and Silverlight its gonna be a DRM delight and YOU won't b

So why does Adobe hate Windows so much? Is it some kind of evil plan for sabotage that they're going to keep supporting Flash on Windows?

My guess is they're in cahoots with the malware suppliers who rely on Flash. These must have grown tired of trying to find easy ways into Linux, Android, or iOS, and want to limit their future efforts to the low-hanging fruits in Windows (and maybe OSX).

Mobile has a pretty harsh download cap compared to wired access from a home PC, and a lot of places still can't get a 4G signal at all. This makes the order-of-magnitude overhead of conversion to H.264 not the best answer either. So what method of delivering vector animations is "the right answer in mobile"? You point out "plenty of ways to get a job done better"; what are they?

Totally agree tepples. On top of the blaring inefficiency and diminished quality of converting vector animations into video, you also lose interactivity. I remember for awhile some companies had these videos where they would pause, and you'd make a choice, and then some other clip would play. Kind of a gimmick and nothing more.

If you look to other options like HTML5, you can see those like Facebook have retreated from that in favor of native mobile code. With something like Flash or native code, you usu

I just love how everyone just takes Jobs at his word when anyone with half a brain knew what the whole flash thing was REALLY about...control. With flash you can bypass the appstore which is something Jobs sure as hell wasn't gonna tolerate. The simple fact is trying to build the same things you can in flash in HTML V5 is a royal PITA if it'll even work at all and more importantly it makes it easy for publishers to simply use the appstore thus making sure Apple gets their cut.

While I never was a big fan of Apple I have to give Jobs credit, the man really could sell bullshit as truth. if MSFT would have pulled the same stunt there would have been pitchforks but Steve with his RDF was able to sell it to the masses almost without question and I find that fascinating.

Final verdict? When flash is dead web video will be locked down with H.265 DRM and it'll be the big three splitting the pie, Apple, Google who will have to lock down Android to have support for the DRM but since they made sure not to allow any GPL V3 into Android won't be a problem, and MSFT. I never thought I would see the day that FOSS guys would be cheering their own execution but hey, shit happens. Hope you like not having web video in FOSS, but if you think MPEG-LA is gonna play nice? I have some magic beans you might be interested in.

As someone who's also in the e-learning industry I agree.However we've been trying to ditch Flash for a good two years now.It's not happened yet, however, but 99% of our flash output this year has been Captivate slideshows, the 1% has been supporting existing items, and the rest of our output is HTML based content that only suffers on the prettyness side because our clients insist on supporting IE 6. When we can convince them not to we have no issues with it.

HTML5 didn't exist when a lot of the classic Flash toons were first published. HTML5 toons don't play in IE 8 without Chrome Frame, which is far less widely deployed than Flash Player. And even today, what product should people use to edit HTML5 toons or to update their existing Flash toons to HTML5?

To be fair, when a lot of those classic toons were made, Flash was pretty streamlined and lean, capable of running on low-end machines. Current versions struggle to run on quad core CPUs with GPU acceleration.

If Adobe had stayed focused on keeping their product streamlined and lean, it would have had a fighting chance on mobile platforms, but instead... bloated code, security holes caused by bloated code, and update after update after update after update after update to fix the security holes. Bloated code

Nah Flash was always a terrible product, it's just that no one knew it back then. Wonder why Flash Player 10+ has so much bloat? It's because it can STILL run all that old crap that was developed for the original Actionscript Virtual Machine (FP8 and below). Not only that, as Flash became super popular it also became a vector for an increasingly large number of malware attacks which necessitated all of those fixes and patches, and the awful, AWFUL flash player security model that is the bane of every single

I just checked on caniuse.com today. SVG+SMIL doesn't work [caniuse.com] on any version of Internet Explorer (even IE 9) or on existing Android phones (which run Android 2.3), and the page states that it's "not working in HTML files" in Safari on Mac or iOS. And even today, what product should people use to edit SVG+SMIL toons?

Then what would you prefer that animators use instead of Flash for their web animations?

I'd like a good answer to this also.

Right now there are three main applications designed for HTML5 animation (as opposed to HTML5 apps): Adobe Edge, Sencha Animator, and Tumult Hype. I know nothing about any of them. Some quick googling suggests that they're all new and still unproven, in various stages of polish and completeness.

The problem, I feel, is that Flash is being ostracized from the net too quickly, before mature tools to replace it are ready. I'm sure there will be a program that will allow hobbyists, amateurs, and professionals alike to create animations in the new standard of HTML5. But the software isn't quite mature yet. Certainly not as polished and feature-packed as Flash.

I just hope HTML5 lasts. If we go through a purge like this every few years, animation on the web may never fully recover.

I just hope HTML5 lasts. If we go through a purge like this every few years, animation on the web may never fully recover.

It's hard to imagine a case where we lose support for HTML5. Besides the whole "supported by several completely different vendors" thing, there's also the fact that it's just minor extensions to a platform that everyone already has. Being worried about HTML5 not lasting is like worrying that email won't last -- maybe one day we'll have something better, but it's going to be a *long* time before we can't get email.

I used Edge to try and diversify myself away from Flash development at my last job. As I'm stating this in retrospect, you can probably guess how well that went. My biggest issue with Edge was that (at least when I used it) the javascript libraries and html output came in at around 200kb, which was just utter insanity. Now I develop iPad games with Unity which is just as painful, but at least it seems to have an immediate future.

I assume you've never heard of Homestar Runner or Weebl and Bob or Animutations or the entire content of Newgrounds and Albino Blacksheep.

I've heard of Homestar Runner, but I've never heard of the others. Having been online nearly every day for the last 15 years, I can tell you that those are hardly critical (even notable) aspects of the web or web experience. As for how to get Homestar working in a non-Flash world, javascript is powerful enough now to handle anything I've seen on Homestar.

He decided to kill it to prevent applications that did not use the iOS store from running on iPhone.

Then why did Apple so heavily promote HTML apps, even after the App Store came around... year after year they have added more support to help HTML apps look and feel like native apps and able to use the same APIs.

Because the ONLY browser that actually works is Safari, therefor still in the walled garden? Apple has always been about hardware and lock in, the appstore is a nice extra cash cow but still nothing compared to their hardware business.

so as long as it gives Apple control of the platform, and with Android and IE lagging so far behind HTML V5 does give Apple more control, then there is no reason why they wouldn't support it. on the other hand flash allowed people to bypass Apple completely and that same app

I don't mind it. The mobile version seems to be a fair bit more efficient than the desktop version, meaning that some things that stutter on even my 2.53Ghz i3 with 8GB of RAM play just fine on my Atrix 4g. I plug in every other day to charge, whether I've used Flash or not, it doesn't seem to make much of a difference at all.

Yes, Flash on phones is horrible. It's only slightly less horrible on tablets. And many SWFs designed for keyboard-and-mice-toting desktop PCs are useless.

All these problems, plus the poor battery life and general sluggishness of Flash, were certainly convenient scapegoats. They're even true. But Jobs wasn't an idiot. He knew that if Flash had been available in iOS, legions of developers would have used it to do an end-run around the app store's re

There was no store when the first iPhone was launched. Apple also did invest quite heavily in a (at the time) emerging and badly supported competitor: HTML5 (even going as far as pretenting that it will be the only way to develop for iPhone). Considering the standard of 2007 in mobile browsing (i.e. tiny screen displaying abridged version), they could have gotten away for a lot more control freakiness.

And let's not forget that Adobe has had a love hate relationship with Apple for quite a bit of time and with Flash, they showed a continuous stream of bad quality release and general lack of interest in the platform. (and continue even today - Flash sucks on Mac)

So indeed, that is control of the platform. However, rather than profit motivated, that is the classical control of the platform: avoid your competitor to control your platform or have your user blame you for somebody else mistakes.

Interestingly we can compare that decision with the biggest competitor of the iPhone: Android. Android did support Flash and java. Yet it took 4 years for a highly motivated Adobe to produce a version of flash that run smoothly, but only on an incredibly powerful 1 GHz double core mobile phone (in 2007, people would have laughed at you for thinking that was even possible) And for java, you have Oracle suing Google for not lining enough money in its pocket. Really, as a CEO trying carve a new niche in a highly competitive market, would you like to depend on those 2 (Oracle, Adobe) "partners" ?

Bullshit. If Jobs wanted to lead the way to destroying flash he should have banned it from OS X too. The fact that he didn't just proves what everyone has said all along that the real intention of banning Flash on iOS is to eliminate an avenue for people to make money selling stuff without paying an Apple tax.

It's filled a gap, but with better apps, chrome being integrated now, time to let it retire gracefully.Sure there'll be a way to sideload it just in case it is needed for something in particular.

That's the thing, when Jobs said it should die, many agreed, but to not (at the time) offer an alternative, wasn't the best way to handle it. The web moves on, html5 (and the browsers) are more common, standards are just about standardised.

I'll be glad to see flash go as well, but don't you think this is a little premature? Flash is still almost ubiquitous for web-based video and games, and that's not a small market. Adobe could, I'm sure, easily maintain profitability for another 3-4 years as Flash slowly declines, instead of just killing it as they seem to be doing. There's no more Linux client either, if you recall.

Flash is extremely annoying when you don't want it, but it's pretty nice to have around when you go to seek it out. Flash ga

That's the thing, when Jobs said it should die, many agreed, but to not (at the time) offer an alternative, wasn't the best way to handle it.

Yes it was. It was absolutely the best way to handle it. Offering an alternative would have just dragged things out and offered a subpar product. Say whatever you want about Jobs but he was not afraid to cut the cord if he felt that a technology had run its course and when he's done so, it's made a drastic shift happen quickly. Flash (on mobile devices) is but one example of that and I, for one, am glad for it. Flash sucks. Despite what some people will say, Flash sucks. Hardcore. It dying out faster rather

For the phone, the main reason flash had to go was the ads. You load a webpage with several flash ads, and the battery and performance is going to be drained. There is no reason to have flash on a phone, if you can guarantee that the flash is not going to autorun. Really only the lack of autoplay was the only thing that was needed to keep performance up. However, that would break the model that has kept flash in the forefront, the only advertisement delivery system that is not under use control by defau

Being able to browse the web in full and view flash contents is on of the best features of android phones. Flash has been a useful technology and I don't understand why it's being viewed as a good thing that it's going away. I understand open standards being used opposed to proprietary technology, but this seems more important for developers than end users. I honestly don't care how I get the content as long as I can, but why not continue to develop the technology that sets the phone apart?

I personally want flash on my new device.Do I want flash to die - yes.Unfortunately, some websites that I am locked into require flash, and being unable to use these on my new device will simply mean lack of flexibility and me needing to lug two devices, or use my old one.

Personally I see it as a failure of the tech world to understand why some people were stubbornly holding on to Flash.

Flash was a very easy way for product designers to develop some pretty advanced client side technologies, with a plugin that had more than 90% adoption rates. iOS changed that, much to adobe's chagrin.

But like some commenters said, this technology is now being killed without proper replacements. You still can't do socket communications directly from within a browser without using plugins. Definitely not with UDP. This was one of the reasons Flash was awesome. It filled the gap of all those features missing in a browser (or available only in some and not in others).

And let's not even start with the authoring tool - I have yet to see a tool that was as friendly and intuitive as Adobe's for producing Flash apps.

I agree. And for web game developers, Flash is still the best tech out there. HTML5 is okay, but still not terribly mature (and don't get me started on sound) or consistently implemented. Meanwhile on the Flash platform you have at least two mature, useful frameworks--FlashPunk and Flixel--that allow for quick prototyping and rich development.

Setting the bar higher for authoring tools is a good thing. It will hopefully prevent another generation of animated, shiny and near devoid of text websites. Nothing like trying to find a restaurant menu when the website has clearly been done by the owners kid with a pirated copy of the Adobe suite.

Flash was never suitable for phones because it is a major battery hog. Fixing the problem would mean shifting development from low-bid contractors to people who actually know what they are doing and that's very expensive. Adobe needs to earn money for their shareholders, so they really have no other choice.

IOW, the problem wasn't in the tech world, it was in the business world. Adobe made development decisions on how they would affect next quarter and the result was a product with no long-term future.

They are just killing the mobile version not the desktop! Google Chrome has it built into the browser, so it will be around for quite some time! The mobile version never worked outside of using it to watch videos. It was very inconsistant from device to device, not to mention that it drained my battery and turned my tablet into a hot plate!

One wonders why they're bothering to support it on Windows; if they're dropping support for more devices — first all the non-Chrome Linux systems, now all Android devices? Is this some sort of attack on Linux?

But since Flash is becoming less cross-platform I'm imagining that developers will leave in droves, and that at least some of them will be smart enough to avoid Adobe for their next solution...

on windows it's making them directly money on their report spreadsheets, due to flash development tools being on windows(and there's huge use and demand still there, from flash games to stupid adverts to streaming shit).

however, they have awful time metering the income that comes from supporting the mobile platforms, they always had. they never found anyone to pay them a bill specifically just for supporting the mobile platforms(manufacturers weren't going to go for paying for it without there already being

on windows it's making them directly money on their report spreadsheets, due to flash development tools being on windows(and there's huge use and demand still there, from flash games to stupid adverts to streaming shit).
however, they have awful time metering the income that comes from supporting the mobile platforms, they always had. they never found anyone to pay them a bill specifically just for supporting the mobile platforms(manufacturers weren't going to go for paying for it without there already be

The headline isn't entirely accurate. Adobe is only supporting flash on Android devices in which it is currently installed. In August, if you don't have flash installed, you ain't gettin' it. They've also come up with a list of "certified" Android hardware whatever in the hell that's actually supposed to accomplish.

Now then, notice that Adobe continues to support and develop Flash for the Windows platform. This is the largest marketshare of desktops out there. If Adobe "saw the light" , and conceeded to some Apple fanboi fantasy land, they would most certainly be dropping all Flash support across the board and declare it "not a profitable direction for the company" or some other such reason.

The fact that Adobe has Nixed the Linux version of Flash for FireFox, and now raising issue with Android, leads me to wonder why they are focused on crippling the two most open and alternative systems out there.

Thousands and thousands of games. All playable on Linux. And this is going away:(What a shame.

Many of these games are crap, but there are some really good ones out there.

The ability to have a single file contain a complete game with audio, graphics, and so, and have that work on all current OSes, which people could play simply by giving them the link to it, no install needed, or download locally and play offline there, was pretty awesome. Those times will be no more:(

Spad said this in a comment above, but they also are killing Flash on desktop LInux ! It seems like that should be mentioned, as this is slashdot, maybe the site with most linux users in the world (was there a previous article,maybe?)

From the roadmap linked from the article;

Linux: Adobe has been working closely with Google to develop a single, modern API for hosting plug-ins within the browser. [...] Adobe has been able to partner with Google in providing a "Pepper" [ http://code.google.com/p/ppapi/ [google.com] ] implementation of Flash Player for all x86/64 platforms supported by the Google Chrome browser [...]For Flash Player releases after 11.2, the Flash Player browser plug-in for Linux will only be available via the "Pepper" API as part of the Google Chrome browser distribution and will no longer be available as a direct download from Adobe. Adobe will continue to provide security updates to non-Pepper distributions of Flash Player 11.2 on Linux for five years from its release.

I've had an iOS device for many years now and I can literally count on one hand the number of times I _NEEDED_ Flash. And, as time goes by, that number is not growing - any website with even a vague hint of what's going on offers an alternative to Flash because they know cutting out the rather large mobile market is a bad idea.

The only real impact the lack of Flash has had is that I don't see Flash advertising and, believe me when I say, I don't miss one second of it.

Lots of restaurants still have their menus or even entire sites done in flash. I notice because I use Chrome on android which does not have flash and have to switch to firefox when I hit a site that depends on it.

Lots of restaurants still have their menus or even entire sites done in flash. I notice because I use Chrome on android which does not have flash and have to switch to firefox when I hit a site that depends on it.

Then complain to those restaurants. Tell the manager/owner: "Did you know that the menus on your website don't work on the iPad or iPhone?" (Don't bother mentioning Android; just stick to the iPad/iPhone since everyone knows what it is.) Most likely this crap was done by a cut-rate web development shop without their knowledge. I don't think most restaurants want to lose business from mobile users if they can help it.

The proper response then to GO TO ANOTHER RESTAURANT. I've done similar things MANY times. If going through flash is the only option, I will not purchase from that site/supplier. In the old days I used to mail them a "FYI" so they could improve, but I don't do that any more. If they're still cluesless in 2012, nothing anyone can say will change them.

You really think the average independent restaurant owner sat down himself and wrote the website in Flash? Don't be ridiculous; this was all contract work. An

I am an anonymous angry person on the internet. I don't judge restaurants by the food or quality of service, but rather how much money they pay someone to make a website on their behalf. Your website has buttons, and I don't like the software you used to make those buttons. Since you so obviously have poor decision making skills, I will not be eating at your establishment. The risk of choking on my food in a fit of hyperbolic rage is just too high. In the future, if you would like angry an

My iPad works as-is, whether or not Apple chooses to continue support. In fact, iOS 6 is indeed not supported.

I did not buy an iPad to use Flash, relying on Adobe to keep up with Apple as iOS was updated. Remember, it was the poster I replied to who said he was screwed without Flash. I am not screwed without iOS 6.